The contemporary performing arts in New York have no better friend than GWEN DEELY. She’s as devoted and busy an audience member as they come.  (All the more so, since she’s got a day job and doesn’t get free tickets like us critics.) I visit her in Manhattan regularly and she always gives me a report of the great events she’s attended. This year she seemed to have had a lot of peak experiences, including her own...

Everybody knows that gay men do up the best holiday decorations. But what about music for the season? Well, “The Nutcracker” and “The Messiah” are bigger and older hits than even “Rudolph” or “White Christmas,” at least in my book. And both were written by gay men, Tchaikovsky and Handel, respectively. There’s nothing quiet as inspired as “The Messiah,” at least...

Last Tuesday night in New York I was the guest at a lovely little dinner party at the home of Denes Striny.  He’s a tenor and voice teacher and later that evening his most famous student, soprano Lauren Flanigan, would be starring in a revival of Hugo Weisgall’s “Esther” at the New York City Opera.  We’ve become friends because we are both former students of Michael Cordovana, a retired assistant conductor from...

In the bio-pic “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell,” Allen Ginsberg describes Russell as a poet who sings.  I like that because it puts a finger on why I’ve never connected well with Russell’s music. Lord knows I’ve tried many times, always hoping to sink into the numerous posthumous collections of his music that have come out in recent years.  His songs and instrumentals always feel like sketches to...

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON — The Montagues and Capulets are at it again with their legendary feud played out through music and dance. But in the new production by the Mark Morris Dance Group, Friar Laurence arrives in time to tell stricken Romeo that fair Juliet is alive. She awakes and they flee. Hearing the news, the families kiss and make up. The twists in “Romeo & Juliet, On Motifs of Shakespeare,” which opened Friday...

“I dreamed of dancing as a child,” says gay dancer and choreographer Richard Daniel. “But I thought a good Midwestern Jewish boy didn’t go to dance class.” Being a good boy hasn’t been a priority for sometime now, but Daniels, 54, still seems haunted by youth.  How else to explain his fascination with Apollo, the eternally young god of art and creativity? For “Telling Tales,” his program of dances for the...

For more than 20 years, he’s been a star in the most elite realm of classical ballet. But his name is more like ESPN. Jock Soto was a mere 16 years old in 1981 when Peter Martins, director of the New York City Ballet, plucked him out of the company’s school. Just four years later Soto was promoted to the troupe’s top tier of dancers. “At that time I was the youngest principal. I was in shock. It was hard to live up...

The Dixie Chicks should take heart. Although they have had their songs dropped from radio stations and been booed at awards shows because of their statements against President Bush, a fellow Texan, they are not alone in the annals of American music for being shunned because of their politics. In his day, the great American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) also faced the difficulties of being a politically engaged artist. In...